I feel a need to respond.

As I got on facebook this morning, I saw my good friend James had posted a little "vent" on love, life, and basically his own personal experience. Honestly after reading it... I felt a need to respond. But I will not respond as he, or anyone, expects. His issues with love, his struggles, are his own, and I will not endeavor to analyze his situation and give him the reasons why he feels the way he does. This, as those of you who know me, is what I would normally do. However, in this case, that would not be helpful to anyone but him. I wish to accept his challenge, to define what "love" really is.


Now, understand, yes I am "only" 19 years old. Have I seen all that the world has to offer? No. Have I had the capability to experience every sensation we can experience as human beings? No. But I will tell you what I have done. I have delved more deeply into the subject of love than possibly any person I have ever known, and I have met quite a few people. My knowledge on the subject is not infinite, nor should it be taken to be applicable to every situation. However, it is extensive. I have lived (figuratively) for eons studying this subject, analyzing the reasons and means as to why we love, what love is, and where it comes from.


Let me first explain what love is NOT.


Love is not sex. In any way shape or form. Sex is an action between to beings. It does not in itself express love. To quote a movie, it is simply fluid exchange. Anyone under the delusion that the action of sex is love or an expression of love is wrong. More on this in a moment.


It is not infatuation. It is not affection. It is not heartfelt warmth. It is not any of the traditional expressions for what human beings call love. All of those phrases we use nowadays, "love", "in love", etc, all of them... that is not what love is.


It is my hypothesis (and I say hypothesis because I have yet to prove it) that very few people in this world ever feel real love. It just is not a common occurrence. In this case, I speak of one type of love, and that is the love of companionship, what most believe that they see when they see husband and wife, girlfriend/boyfriend, lovers. Familial love I will proceed to in a moment. Very few people feel this. They think that they do. So many think they love someone, or are falling in love with someone. So many truly believe, and would die for, those that they believe that they love. But not many do.


James, you asked why so many have died and killed and committed suicide and warred over this mystical emotion? They haven't. They have warred over the illusion of the emotion, a watered down version of love that has seeped into society and become our prevalent idea of happiness and comfort. They, and by they I mean the uneducated masses, do not see their mistake simply because it is so rare to truly love. It is the same reason the ancients created gods for the elements, prayed to the sun, etc. They simply did not understand. It is why so many women were burned at the stake for witchcraft, why so many people have been lost to crude religious rituals when medicine would have cured problems. They simply did not know. People have misconstrued the idea of love to mean something else than it was originally intended to be.


Also, love is not an obsession. For those who know my story, you will laugh at this, as you know why I feel particularly strong on this point. Obsession is a deformed state of love. Obsession is a drug, dangerous and lethal in some cases. However... obsession is closer to love than those fleeting emotions so many make life changing decisions over.


The love of companionship, what so many strive for and spend billions of dollars in the pursuit of dating and such, is not an emotion as people understand it. So many describe the emotions they feel when they are "in love": pain, hurt, anger, disappointment, fear, loneliness, joy, warmth, loyalty, commitment, desire, protection, trust, need, togetherness, work (as you put it James). THe main problem with this line of reasoning is that they are describing the effects of love. They are not describing love itself.


Love, simply, is a state of being. It is a condition. Love is not an emotion, not true love. Love is not some intangible force. It is very real. It is an all-consuming, perpetuating sequence of events, emotions, and thoughts that culminate into one's condition at a certain point in their life. Think in terms of homeostasis. Homeostasis is the body's ability to regulate a stable internal condition. Love, in it's truest form, is a condition of stability. All those other fleeting emotions you have, lust and obsession and joy and hurt, all of those are not love. They are only part of the whole equation. Love is the condition of utter joy, commitment, and devotion, even when one's emotional and mental state are in the depths of despair.


I have seen love work on several levels. First, and this is not because I am religious but because I have experienced it myself, there is the love of God. If you are not religious or do not subscribe to such notions, it is unlikely you will have ever, or will ever, feel this. But there comes from an external force that I do not understand myself a sense of love, a condition of harmony with nature and the world and people, that can get a person through the darkest night. Let me tell you, it is the reason that I am alive today. had I not felt that God loves me, my corpse would be rotting in the grave with long scars along my wrists. I got that close. He saved me. Yes, some of you will say I had simply an out of body experience, a hallucination, etc. That is for you to believe. Those of you who have felt the love of God, truly felt it and not just thought you did because it was something you were taught to believe in, will understand that type of love.


There is the love between man and woman. This, again, is almost the rarest form of love, yet it is what so many strive for. This is very different from the love of God. This is more the condition, the state of being, of love. One can feel the love of God and live in the condition of happiness it brings. Few can feel the love of a lover. This love... is something else.


It starts as all of those funny emotions we feel. ALl that hurt and fear and pain and trust and joy and warmth and excitement. But over time, just like any living thing, it evolves. It evolves into a condition of trust, of loyalty, of commitment and passion. It transforms until the love between man and woman is almost itself a living creature, a tangible expression of the fidelity between two people. It becomes true love only in this case: when the man and woman feel as parts of the whole. One cannot live without the other. It becomes a symbiotic relationship, one that never fades. It is strong, alive, vibrant, and never wavering, not in any moment. It happens so rarely I barely even have seen it. But I have. I have even experienced it.


The last form of love, and the most common, is familial love. But still, so many people misconstrue this. It is not an obligation. It is not something that we think of, smile fondly, then forget. It is a constant state of being, a state in which you would sacrifice all for your kinsmen. It is a protective desire, more like an instinct than any other form of love. Many feel this at one point or another. It is the love of the parent, of the sibling, of the child for its mother. However, in so many this condition is fleeting. It goes and comes like the wind. True familial love never wavers. On a moments notice, when one is in this condition, one will give anything they love for their brothers and sisters. Luckily, I have had the privilege and pleasure to feel this for years, though it is something that, like the love between man and woman, develops over time.


The last form, and the absolute most obscure and rarest form of love, is the condition of "making love". This is the final piece of the puzzle. Sex is not making love. To compare to the two is to compare a computer to a rock. One is simply a verb. Making love is a state of pure and utter joy. It is not done for the pursuit of the feeling. It is done as an expression. It is done to show the condition which the man and woman find themselves in. This can only come when the man and woman love each other as stated above, and fully trust each other. And I mean fully. There is no in between. So many people make the mistake of making life-altering decisions on the basis of a whim. As a good friend of mine put it, the action of sex is like taking a piece of tape and sticking it to your skin. The more it is repeated, the less the tape is able to stick. This is representative of the emotional state in which people put themselves. Time and time again, they pursue sex and do it, without truly realizing that what they are really doing is numbing themselves to what it really is supposed to mean. It is not supposed to be an action. It was intended to be the action of making love, an expression of trust and commitment.


So many do not see this. Many more will refuse to believe it. They will go about living there lives, making the same mistakes. They will continue feeling fleeting emotions, and never find true love, because they do not know what it is they should look for. Lost souls, all of them.


Have I described here what love is? If you think I have, correct that thought. Words cannot express the feelings which they are supposed to represent. The alphabet does not convey depth of feeling. This is simply the logical explanation of love which so many seem unable to find. James, I am truly sorry for the way you feel. Believe me when I say, I have been there. Not in the same manner. But... yes, I do know how you feel. Rejoice in the fact you have a son. Try to make things work with your life. True love, again, does not happen over night. It takes practice. I have seen people totally wrong for each other in the beginning work it out in the end. It takes years. Patience is the key.


To those who believe this explanation, I urge you to think. Think about what you do. Think about your actions. You want true love? Great. But do not settle. Do not delude yourself. Find it, find that person you can trust implicitly, find your other half. For those of you who have not turned to God or do not believe, take a second look. I was agnostic. I was more agnostic than any other person alive. My logical conclusions led me to question Him, to hate Him at times. But then I broke down. And He found me. Love for him is not logical, nor is any other form of love. It has its basis in logic. But it is not logical. It is not rational. It exists, lives, breathes of its own accord, living by it's own rules.


Find it.